EXCURSUS III. SCENE III. THE BOOKSELLERS. S soon as the desire for foreign and domestic literature became general, and men of letters, or those who affected to be so, began to consider a library in their house indispensable, persons were to be found who gained their livelihood by supplying this want. When Cicero, ad Quint. Fr. iii. 4, writes, De bibliotheca tua Græca supplenda, libris commutandis, Latinis comparandis valde velim ista confici.-Sed ego mihi ipsi ista per quem agam non habebo, neque enim venalia sunt, quæ quidem placeant, etc., we cannot suppose that anything else is alluded to than a regular trade in books. He speaks also in like manner of the copies of the laws sold by the librarii, Leg. iii. 20, a librariis petimus; publicis literis consignatam memoriam publicam nullam habemus, and mentions, Philipp. ii. 9, a taberna libraria, in which Clodius took refuge. Under Augustus, we find it already becoming a distinct trade, and Horace himself mentions the brothers, Sosii, by whom his poems were sold. Epist. i. 20, 2, ut prostes Sosiorum pumice levis. Art. Poet. 345: Hic meret æra liber Sosiis (viz. the book, qui miscuit utile dulci). [Under the first Emperors, the trade reached its highest prosperity, and several librarii are mentioned in old authors or inscriptions, as Tryphon, the publisher of Quinctilian and Martial. Mart. iv. 72; xiii. 3; Quinct. Inst. Præf.; and Dorus in Senec. De Benef. vii. 6.] These librarii at first transcribed the books themselves [whence their name], and no doubt kept assistants for the greater and more rapid multiplication of copies of them. [These scribes were some of them the booksellers' slaves, some freedmen, who worked for hire. Probably one person dictated to several at once. The Romans of quality had also their slaves, librarii (see above), who copied the works of their masters or others; so Pomponius Atticus. Nep. Att. 13; Cic. ad Att. iv. 4, 5; xii. 6; xvi. 6. He even made a trade of it, and kept copies of several of Cicero's works on sale. Cic. ad Att. xii. 12, and 44; ii. 2. The labours of the scribe were no doubt often lessened by dictation. Pliny (Ep. iv. 7) says that Regulus had his son's life in exemplaria transcriptum mille.] They also went by the name of bibliopola, Mart. iv. 71, xiii. 3; Poll. vii. 33, βιβλίων κάπηλοι, βιβλιοκάπηλοι; Luc. πρὸς ἀπαίδ. i. 4, 24. Their business seems mostly to have been considered merely in a mercantile point of view, whence celerity was desired rather than correctness. On this account Martial vindicates himself, ii. 8: Si qua videbuntur chartis tibi, lector, in istis Dum properat versus annumerare tibi. And for this reason authors obliged their friends by looking over their copies, and correcting the errors, Mart. vii. 11: Cogis me calamo manuque nostra emendare meos libellos; and Epist. 16: Hos nido licet inseras vel imo, Septem quos tibi mittimus libellos, Hæc illis pretium facit litura. [Cic. ad Att. xvi.56, eas ego perspiciam, corrigam, tum denique edentur.] In Martial's time these librarii, or bibliopolæ, had their shops, taberna, chiefly about the Argiletum, i. 4, 118; but elsewhere also, i. 2, as in the Vicus Sandalarius, Gell. xviii. 4: In Sandalario forte apud librarios fuimus. Galen. de libr. suis, iv. 361: iv yàp rý Σavδαλιαρίῳ καθ ̓ ὃ δὴ πλεῖστα τῶν ἐν Ρώμῃ βιβλιοπωλείων ἐστὶν, κ. τ. λ. [In the Sigillariis, Gell. v. 4, ii. 3.] The titles of the books on sale were suspended on the doors of the shops, or if the taberna were under a portico, on the pillars in front of it. Thus Mart. i. 118, describes the place where his Epigrams were to be sold: Argi nempe soles subire letum: Scriptis postibus hinc et inde totis, And this is what Horace, Art. Poet. 372, refers to: mediocribus esse poetis non homines, non dii, non concessere columnæ; and more plainly, Sat. i. 4, 71, Nulla taberna meos habeat, neque pila libellos; on which see Heindorf's remarks. Comp. Seneca, Ep. 33. [The shelves of the tabernæ were called nidi; in these the works lay bound. Mart. i. 118, rasum pumice purpuraque cultum; viii. 61: Nec umbilicis quod decorus et cedro Spargor per omnes Roma quas tenet gentes.] The price at which the books were sold, after all, appears but moderate, especially when we remember that the cost of the external ornaments is to be taken into account. Martial, i. 118, says, the bookseller (dabit) Rasum pumice purpuraque cultum Denariis tibi quinque Martialem ; and yet this first book contained 119 Epigrams, some of them tolerably long. He places the price still lower in Ep. 67, where he exclaims to a plagiarius, Erras, meorum fur avare librorum, Fieri poetam posse qui putas tanti. Non sex paratur, aut decem sophos nummis. And Tryphon, he says, could actually sell the Xenia for two sesterces. See xiii. 3. It is true he says of his poems (ii. 1), hæc una peragit librarius hora, so that perhaps the binding often cost more than the book. [Sidon. Apoll. v. 15.] In what relation the bookseller and author stood to each other, is not an uninteresting subject for inquiry. People are usually inclined to suppose that the ancient authors wrote only for the sake of reputation, and did not expect any pecuniary remuneration. If, however, this may be considered as in general true, and especially in the earlier times, still there is no doubt that, in other cases, writers obtained a substantial gain from their works. This is not concluded from the paupertas impulit audax, ut versus facerem; for at that period Horace had only published poems intended for circulation among friends, but by which he hoped to recommend himself to the great. See Sat. i. 4, 71. Still if Plautus, Terence, and others, sold their comedies to the Ædiles [Gell. iii. 3; Juv. vii. 87], it will surely not appear strange that other authors should receive remuneration for their labour. Thus the elder Pliny was offered by a private individual the sum of 400,000 sest. for his Commentarii electorum, Plin. Ep. iii. 5./ This was, it is true, not the offer of a bookseller, but Martial frequently states, that transactions of this nature did take place between them, as for instance, when he recommends those who wished to have his poems presented or lent to them, to purchase them of his bookseller, iv. 71:2 Exigis ut donem nostros tibi, Quincte, libellos : Non habeo, sed habet bibliopola Tryphon. Comp. i. 118, where the poet very humorously declines lending them; but the matter is quite clear from xi. 108, when he declares he will conclude the book, because he wants money: Quamvis tam longo poteras satur esse libello, When, therefore, he elsewhere designates the business of the poet as a poor one, xiv. 219, nullos referentia nummos carmina, (comp. i. 77), this must be understood of the smallness of the pay in comparison with that of other productive occupations, [for, the remuneration he got for his fourteen books of Epigrams, was much too little to support him during the number of years he was writing,] and v. 16, where he certainly says, At nunc conviva est comissatorque libellus, Et tantum gratis pagina nostra placet. he only means, that those who took pleasure in his poems, did not reward the author, as had been the case in Virgil's time; in the same way he complains, xi. 3, that he was no richer for his epigrams being read in Britain, Spain, and Gaul; for nescit sacculus ista meus. This, however, does not exclude the possibility of his having, by some stipulation with the bookseller, derived a profit; and it is inconceivable how Martial, who, according to his own account, was always in want of money, should have endured quietly to look on, while Tryphon, or Pollius, or Secundus, made a considerable profit of his poems; for we have reason to believe that his books were very successful. See Hor. Art. Poet. 345; Mart. xiv. 194; [xiii. 3, vi. 61, Meque sinus omnis, me manus omnis habet.] and as regards a later period, Sulpic. Sever. Dial. i. 23, who is quoted by Schöttgen, in his rather superficial treatise De librariis et bibliopolis antiquorum, and in Poleni, Suppl. thes. Gr. tom. iii. [Sen. de Ben. vii. 6, calls the publisher emptor, which shows that he acquired the copyright by purchase.] Some of the copies, however, found their way, in the shape of waste paper, into the taverns, and to the vendors of salt-fish, from whom the school-children obtained what they needed. See Mart. iv. 86, iii. 2, xiii. 1, and particularly vi. 60, 7: Quam multi tineas pascunt blattasque diserti, Et redimunt soli carmina docta coqui. It was not in Rome and Greece only, or in the countries into which Greek refinement was introduced, that the literature of Rome was disseminated; but also among the less civilized provinces. Hence Horace says of a good book, trans mare curret, and Martial is read in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. [vii. 88, viii. 61, x. 104, ix. 100, xi. 3, xii. 3.] So also Plin. Epist. ix. 11: Bibliopolas Lugduni esse non putabam, ac tanto lubentius ex literis tuis cognovi venditari libellos meos. [Sidon. Apoll. Ep. ix. 7; Hor. Ep. i. 20, 13. The booksellers' shops were fashionable lounges. Gell. xviii. 4, in multorum hominum cœtu, xiii. 30, v. 4. See Schmidt, Geschichte der Denk-und Glaubens freiheit im ersten Jahrhundert der Kaiser; an important work.] EXCURSUS IV. SCENE III. THE LETTER. THE HE Roman of quality, who even at his studies used to avail himself of the hands of another to write extracts for him, still more generally employed a slave in his correspondence, which, notwithstanding all the impediments thrown in its way, by the want of public conveyances, appears to have been tolerably rapid. They had slaves or freedmen for the purpose, ab epistolis, who belonged to the class of the librarii, and were also called ad manum, a manu, amanuenses. Orell. Inscr. 1641. 2874. Jucundus Domitia Bibuli librarius ad manum. Orelli, it is true, makes the distinction; librarius, idemque ad manum: but the amanuensis is called also librarius. Cic. Attic. iv. 16: Epistolæ nostræ tantum habent mysteriorum, ut eas ne librariis fere committamus. Plin. vii. 25: (Cæsarem) epistolas tantarum rerum quaternas pariter librariis dictare aut, si nihil aliud ageret, septenas (accepimus). As correspondence was frequently carried on in Greek, they had also libr. ab epistolis Græcis (Orell. 2437), as well as ab epistolis Latinis. Id. 2997. Before a letter was ready to be despatched, five things were required, which we find mentioned all together in Plaut. Bacch. iv. 4, 64: CHR. Nunc tu abi intro, Pistoclere, ad Bacchidem, atque effer cito— The ring comes afterwards. Of these, the tabella were, like the pugillares, or codicilli [codicillus and codex is properly plurium tabularum contextus. Sen. de Brev. Vit. 13: Isid. vi. 13], thin tablets of wood (the pugillares also of ivory or citrus, Mart. xiv. 3, 5, and of parchment, ib. 7), and were covered over with wax (Ovid. Art. Am. i. 437, cera rasis infusa tabellis), in which the letters were formed with a stilus. [Isid. vi. 8, Ante chartæ et membranarum usum, in dolatis ex ligno codicellis epistolarum colloquia scribebantur. Ovid. Am. i. 12; Festus 8. v.] They naturally varied in size. For elegant loveletters, very small tablets were used, which bore a name of doubtful signification,—Vitelliani. Mart. xiv. 8 and 9, Vitelliani. Quod minimos cernis, mitti nos credis amicæ. [Schol. ad Juv. ix. 36.] Of this description are the tabella which Amor brings to Polyphemus in an antique painting. Still, letters were also written on papyrus. Cic. Fam. vii. 18 [ad Qu. fr. ii. 15 ; |